Morning journal and courier., 1887-06-13
NAPOLEON,S RIVAL IN PeNP.
The Duke of fRochefoucauld--D vilIe and the Gorgeous Life He Led.


 vf11e and the Gorgeous Life He Led. Paris Letter to Chicago Tribune.l
 The Duke de Ia Rochefoucauld-D Dendeau- vile is dead. He was not so we'll known to the public of the present day as some of his relatives, but he was really more worthy of note than them all. Indeed he used to be the most conspicuous member of the family,
 but that was long ago in the days of the em-
 pire. Now is there a more conspicuous fam
 fly in France than that of the Rochefou-
 caulds apart from royalty itself. The late
 dukes brother is the famous Duke de Ia
 Roekafoucauld-Bisa whose daughters are
 the Duchess de Luynes and the Princess de
 Ligne. His wife was sister of the Marquis
 de Colbert. The whole family of course is
 intensely royalist, that is Orleanist, and
 equally hostile to the republic and to the
 Bonapartes. The late duke was probably the
 best specimen of the old-school nobility to
 be found in France. His wealth was enor-
 nous. They say his income was one million
 dollars a year. His mansion in the Rue de
 Varennes was accounted the finest private
 residence in Paris, and his Chateau la Grand iniere, at Vendome, was second only to Chan tilly itself. He always spent the summer and autumn at La Grandiniere, and during the empire, when the Orleanists were in ex- ile, it was the rallying point of all Monar- chists. His hunting and shooting parties there were almost equal to those of later years at Chantilly. He kept one hundred and fifty horses in his stables and two hun dred dogs in his kennels. When he rode out he was attended by body guard of one hundred brilliantly uniformed horsemen and | by mounted band of twenty musicians. In ! this regal style he used 10 ride about the country, taking pleasure in annoying the ad- harQ Ia of Ina mir Cn T I,.o l carry his pomp and display that the prefect of the department brought it to the atten- l ton of the emperor, asking if it would not ! be best to put stop to it. But Napoleon, although much annoyed by the duke's con l duct, did not dare to interfere. In Paris the duke's course was if possible still more exas- perating. Did Napoleon hold reception at the Tuileries the duke also held one ill the l Rue de Varennes with greater pomp. Did the emperor get a new equipage, forthwith | the duke obtained finer, Did the emperor spend one million francs, the duke spent two million. Year after year he outshone the I imperial court. But the end came at last. i This was when the last of his four children died and he realized that there would be no one to bear his name. Then he retired from | society and hid himself from the world that l had known him. Most of the time he lived quietly at Cannes, while his vast fortune went on accumulating and increasing at 8 1 prodigious rate. He died at Cannes of heart disease without an hour of i'll health, and the event passed almost unnoticed by the world. | His vast fortune, estimated at something | more than thirty million dollars, will all go \ to the Duke de Ia Roehefoucauld- -Bisaceia. As the latter nobleman already has fortune of about fifteen million dollars, he thus be- l comes one of the wealthiest men in Europe I His wife and daughters possess the finest and costliest jewels in the world outside of royal l collections, and indeed are only surpassed by I the crown jewels of England and France. | The father of these two dukes was that fa-
 nous Sosthene de la Rochefoucauld, who was minister of fine arts under the reign of the restored Bourbons. He will be remembered chiefly as stern censor of public morals. In his department he had an opportunity to make parade of austere virtues, and he did so with surprising effect. He issued the fa- nous decree that all ballet dancers at the op- era should wear skirts coming within half a meter (nine and one-half inches) of the floor; I the said skirts to be of non transparent
 material and the hem weighted by sewing
 in shot or sand, that in rapid dancing | it will not rise higher than the prescribed ! distance from the floor. He also applied l himself to reforming the works of art at 1 the Louvre. He did not go so far as that pope who clad marble goddesses in skirts of sheet-iron, but he actually had certain l draperies added to all the nude statues, and some of the more objectionable ones and | several paintings he had locked up where the public could not behold them. His grand children are reputed to be less severe in moral sense.